DAY 3 post #2 Suggestion for Quests again. There are some quests, such as don't get attacked by an enemy more than 5 times. In the game, it's hard to tell how many times lich was attacked. Is there a way to indicate it?
Day 5 #1 #1 The Map is called Forzen. But the weather effects in this map is just little snow. I think it should be storm in some stages. #2 Is it possible to add a shake to toggle a skill feature? It's quite suitable for the Earthquake skill. And it takes effect to all enemies on the filed. #3 Sometimes the scroll of stage maps in Campaign screen is laggy. Maps don't move with swipe left or right.
Day 5 #2 #1 In the minimap of each stage, you should add the mark of entries and the location of Lich. #2 In the main screen, it's called SHOP. However, Shop is just a sub-tab in the opened Upgrade menu. Why not make Upgrade in the main menu? #3 The pictures for buying 15600, 33800 and 97500 Jelly are the same. You can change the pictures to suit the different amount. Such as using a box, a chest, etc. to represent the huge amount.
Tower diversity could be improved. Currently all the towers are shorter range except Rocketeer and DeathRay. The DeathRay is the only medium range tower but it's fire rate is slower. Adding or tweaking a medium rate faster fire rate tower would enhance strategy. The LD maps are typically smaller so tower range is less of an issue especially early but I would encourage larger maps. Flying enemies are under-utilized. For example in frozen level 7 I recall 3 (maybe mor but definitely a minority) waves of flying enemies out of 38. In most levels the anti-air tower isn't worth the space. Flying enemies would be great mixed in more with land units. Also, unless I am wrong eagles seem to be the only flying enemy and are boring. Enemies getting faster as they lose health/armor is a great feature currently in place. It gives the sense they are running in desperation and sudden speed presents a challenge in some cases. This is one good element of LD that becomes stronger with larger maps. Although I am unaware of the specs LD does a good job of making in-game tower upgrades seem meaningful. As an experiment I loaded up on level I rapiders to compare with my typical emphasis on tower upgrades. My perception was that the lower level rapiders (which occupied nearly every tile) were clearly inferior to few higher level rapiders. The effect of upgrades feels balanced. A launch price point of $0.99 would be my recommendation followed by a firm $1.99 price. Beta questionnaires usually request pricing suggestions. For a 30 mission tower defense game $1.99 is a fair price (maybe $2.99). However, with the App Store economy I'm hard pressed to think of a popular tower defense game that has 't been $0.99 or free. In my opinion Jelly Oasis' strategy with Elf Defense of dropping ED from $2.99 to $0.99 after one month (Mar 1) and then free just over 2 months (Apr 6) from launch (launch was Feb 1) will probably hurt Lich Defense sales if starting at higher tier. Do it backwards this time, I give in to launch sales so start low for a very brief time then go up in price and stay there a while. Both LD and ED are great formats for added level packs (similar to the Creeps) so consider adding IAP level packs if sales lull over time. Also these quests require victory to complete, not just game "end". A tiny detail benefiting people like me who are into shortcuts would be to specify victory. The 2x speed quests are my least favorite because they discourage the speed variety I think it one of LD's strengths.
Day #5 Post #2 More Suggestions (1) Level Editor - Games that do extremely well on the iOS Market (or any market for that matter) rely largely on a community of highly enthusiastic gamers to do so. I do believe that LD has potential to become such a game. A Level Editor will be an excellent update in the future to help gamers build the community. How would the Level Editor work? Basically, the team needs to prepare just 3 major types of tiles: (a) Enemy Path Tile - This is straightforward, this is basically the enemy pathway (b) Building Tile - This tile will allow players to build their towers on it. (c) Block Tile - Basically, these are all your "large" terrain features like rocks, etc. Each of these types would be styled according to the different themes. What is so good about having a Level Editor (a) Players can now upload their own levels for their friends or other LD players to play and test their own skills on. From this, the team can feature every month "Staff Pick" Levels or "Most Popular" Levels. To help attract more players, the team can consider taking the best levels and release them as new updates or brand new stages. (I think players would definitely like to see their own work featured). (b) Having a Level Editor is also extremely good marketing. The number of contests you can run with the Level Editor cannot be underestimated. Furthermore, looking at how all kinds of games have developed of editors, we may end up seeing some really wonderful LD spin-offs! (2) More "activity" on the screen? - Currently, the entire battle scene feels quite static. I hope the team can consider adding more animated background elements. (e.g. Birds flying from one end to another whenever a wave begins. People running out of the buildings that the player tries to destroy). All these elements come together to create a more immersive and engaging atmosphere that would definitely add to the level of polish of LD. Bugs (1) Sound/Music - I guess this is probably mentioned before. Whenever a boss character appears, the background music is stopped. I believe this happens probably because the boss track has yet to be added to the game. Hope this gets resolved soon!
Day 5 Post 1 Allow custom music through In-App Purchases or automatically unlocked when you complete certain stages.
Day 5 Post 2 Implement a spell tree. The player can choose between increasing the range, damage or cooldown of the spell when he/she upgrades the spell. Every 5 levels, the spell branches out into different types. For example. lighting could become chain lightning or a temporary lightning sentry.
Player profiles would allow multiple users sharing the same device to play separate games without having to share progress or stats. With LD's emphasis on Lich customization and tower upgrades as well as stat tracking (all of which are strengths) allowing multiple profiles would let different users craft their playing experience to their taste on say the family iPad. Plus this would encourage discussion and sharing around LD (i.e "my lich is stronger," "how did your rapiders get so powerful," "I wish my Lich had a cool IAP robe"). Kudos for level caps that do not prevent unending upgrades. Tower level caps at 20 allow for a seemingly unending amount of upgrading without ceiling. My lich is at level 19 but there doesn't seem to be any end in sight (from the level progress indicator it looks like my lich could reach near 100). Although level limits are in place there is nothing that would leave players feeling stunted in progress. Initially I didn't like that the Lich automatically heals but as levels get harder I have come to appreciate it and think it balances the game. Now I think the problem is that it takes the game too long to get challenging. Early waves are often too easy. To test on Frozen level 8 I did not build any towers or use any skills so relied only Lich defensive auto-attack. The Lich did not get damaged by enemies until wave 5 (of 43) but by the start of wave 10 he was back to full health due to auto-heal (so maybe wave 5 was harder for Lich than 6-9). Lich alone did not die until wave 11. The units that seemed most damaging to the undefended Lich was the larger eagles in waves 5 and 10 (I previously noted air units are rarer than land units, maybe this is for balance). Lich did not die until wave 11 when land units came from both sides. Wave 11 is 25% through the level with no action from player. Early easy waves are helpful for clearing buildings and placing towers but here is an example I feel it went on too long. Sometimes there is a sense of easy gameplay followed by a stiff rise in difficulty. I recommend unlocking hard mode for each campaign on completion (i.e. unlock hard Meadow option when Frozen stage opens). With Lich leveling up and getting more powerful as progress it makes it less likely levels in early campaigns are worth repeating at standard difficulty. Also unlocking hard campaign will acknowledge player victory and promote further play. The reality is many people who download LD may never play through full completion so earlier accessibility may promote longer interest. Also if players want to grind on challenging levels to earn upgrades should they get stuck early hard will allow for 2 scenarios for play (not just forward). I wonder how effective Lich upgrades are. To test the above concerns about easy early waves and earlier levels being too simple I went back to Meadow level 6 and played without towers or skills, only level 17 Lich defensive auto-attack. On Meadow level 6 (similar in design but smaller than Frozen level 8) my Lich died in wave 13 (of 30). Since Lich died in wave 11 of Frozen 8 the time lasted without towers or skills seemed similar despite presumably easier early level enemies. This suggests early levels are not a cakewalk and that strategy depends heavily on tower selection and upgrade. Also it seems more than fighting enemies players are fighting terrain and level design.
I specifically tested this with Frozen theme stage 6 and my result was different. I was able to complete "Play the game at twice the speed to the end" quest with 4x from start to finish. FYI I was able to kill the last boss as well during this test. Not sure if that would make any difference. Please change the quest to "Complete the level at twice the speed or faster to the end"
Day 5 Post#3 Ok, first of all I finally completed all the quests... So there's no infinite mode in beta version. Hope this will be added. Also I hope that there will be quests with jelly awards. The hardest quest for me was to kill 500 mobs with lich attack in Dragon's Nest(BTW I think it should be named like Dragon's Lair). Here's the main idea to complete it(you can see unreadable towers' grade numbers after revive, confirming): ----------------------- I found few BUGS while completing quests. 1) The same bug I explained with tower menu, but with build menu now(happens on maps with vertical scrolling): 2) I hadn't completed the Dragon's Nest on hard mode and it was locked, but was shown as completed on S grade: 3) Now about game freeze. To be honest, it is not freeze, but the game stops registering your taps. It is very funny bug. Here are the steps: Code: 1) Start any mission. (for example, [B]Don't be square[/B] mission); 2) Now take your device and put it to your belly :D so that iDevice's display is in full contact with skin. 3) Take it back to your hands and try to build a tower. You can not? Then you've done everything right. *it's not necessary to use just your belly, you can use any flat area of your skin EDIT: In order to turn tap registering on, repeat paragraphs 2-3.
Yeah, that's actually a good idea. Have a quest icon in the pause menu that'll show the quests for that stage and mark the ones you've already completed so we can keep track as we're still playing.
Day #5 Post #3 Just to further develop the three of the points raised by undeadcow (1) Improving Tower Diversity - Firstly, the in-game tower upgrade system needs to be tweaked. Currently, the in-game tower upgrades do not seem to do anything other than increasing the damage (I may be wrong). To help improve the system and tower diversity, each in-game tower upgrade should bring increments in power/range/speed. What do I mean? For example, the player builds a Rapider on the first stage. At Level 1, the Rapider comes with the default power/range/speed At Level 2, the Rapider's range expands (made visible with a larger white range circle) At Level 3, it further expands, etc. Basically the team should look into making the in-level tower upgrades, influence all 3 aspects of the tower. *NOTE: the Levels here do not refer to those Upgrades you buy at the shop.* (1a) Visual Indications of In-level Tower Upgrades - To further the idea of the tower upgrades in-level, I hope the team can consider the following visual indicators. Power - The power of the towers can be indicated via the intensity of the colour RED (Dark RED means the damage is the highest, Light RED means the damage is lower) Range - The white circle used currently works well, but as mentioned earlier, change the "white" to RED to show the difference in power Speed - No colour indication needed. This would be very useful for towers like the Rocketeer. The edge of its range circle can be Dark RED and the RED slowly fades to light RED as the range gets closer to the Tower (signifying the less damage caused at a close range with the Rocketeer) (2) Flying Bosses? - So far, I have yet to see any Flying Bosses in the first two theme stages of the game. I do hope the team can consider adding some flying-enemies! We can have normal troops riding on the Gryphons as one type of Flying Boss (they would look very cool!) This should address undeadcow's point on "Flying Enemies" (3) Desperation of Enemies and now the Lich? - I really like how this works on the enemies but I hope we can add this to the Lich as well. As the Lich health lowers, I hope bits of its armour can drop off. When the Lich has 10% health remaining, all that would remain would be its skeletal look. It would be both funny and cool EDIT: fell asleep before i could finish. give me time. work in progress EDIT2: Done
guess this may be a bug. I faced this with the stages in the first theme. AnimeX and Saya, any word to add on this?
Day 5 Post 1: Suggestions: 1: It would be nice if you could select to upgrade a tower before you have enough MP to do the upgrade so when you get enough it will automatically upgrade it for you. This would be a good time saver and help you focus on more of the gameplay. 2: The tips are kind of helpful but there should be more that offer strategy tips. Perhaps these would be too big for the tip boxes that pop up and a separate section could be included to offer tips. 3: It would be a cool feature to be able to combine different towers to make them have both towers abilities but not be able to upgrade them. This could off some more strategy for the harder maps and would help for infinite mode.
Day 5 Post 2: Suggestion 1: While I like that there are methods that for the dev to communicate with the players I do not like that the note pops up everytime I open the app when it's been closed. They should only pop up when it's new and hasn't been read before. 2: On the quests map selection screen you should be able to change maps with swipe controls. It's weird that they work on the other screens but not on that one. 3: I feel that there should be a store button on all the screens maybe a small icon on a corner of the screen so you can access from anywhere except while playing a map. 4: The message you get when you try to buy something and you don't have enough gold is a little awkward and should say purchase more instead of recharge. Recharge could confuse some folks into think it may be a free process.
Spelling/Grammatical Errors: Should say " The Soulstealer has the same price for summon/unsummon. You should sell them in a crisis" Should say " Don't summon a tower until clearing the 1st wave" "Game over at the 21st wave"
I've played the game again from the start and can confirm that the Frozen Theme Stage 6 can be finished even in Normal Speed and x4. I think the Devs forgot about adding a rule for the said Quest in that specific level.
